Since the later half of the 20th century, a rather perplexing enigma has been playing the scientists and weather experts around the world. It is called ball lightning. The term refers to reports of luminous, spherical objects with diameters varying from pea-sized to several meters. It is usually associated with thunderstorms, but lasts considerably longer than the split-second flash of a lightning bolt. Many early reports say that the ball eventually explodes, sometimes with fatal consequences, leaving behind the odor of sulfur.
Somewhere in the summer of 1960, Mrs. Louise Matthews, a 51-year-old woman of 2546 Oakland Street, was flaneuring on her living room sofa when she noticed a ball of fire descending through the Venetian blinds of a window. Horrified, she buried her face in the sofa and shrieked “Oh Lord not like this!”
After a few moments, she held herself together and rose to examine her body. She found that her hands and head were burnt, and the hair at the back of her head had turned brittle, and was falling into clumps. Panicking, she ran into the streets, where neighbors gasped at her hair. His husband, on returning home, fell into tears, and feared that it was God's warning.
Louise contacted the Afro American, a local newspaper, who published her story in their June 4, 1960 edition. You can read the full newspaper article here. After Louise relayed her story to the Afro American, she was visited by two strange men in black suits in her house, who interrogated her about the incident, told her that she should be happy as she had helped in "saving the nation", and forbade her from sharing her story with anyone.
There are a variety of explanations for the ball lightning phenomenon, including a list of complex natural explanations which can be found on Wikipedia. The UFO hypothesis, however, seems more fitting in this case, especially because of the MiB visit. While it's really difficult to find out what really happened that day at the house of Louise Matthews, theories can be proposed. What are your theories? Leave your comments below.
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